You know a story’s good when you’re compelled to share it, which happened to me several times while reading … I knew my sixteen-year-old son would love this: I had him read it to me, and we kept talking about it for days.

As a bisexual Mexican-American woman, I didn’t see myself reflected very often in books I read as a child or teen. To be honest, I still rarely see characters who are just like me. As a teen, especially, I really longed for some kind of affirmation that my being attracted to other girls was okay. I didn’t believe it was.

More than most books, there is something here for everyone. And while diverse characters were a necessity in each story, emphasizing that diversity is not the focus of the stories. The diversity also extends to a whole range of types of stories, all under the speculative fiction umbrella… as I work my way through the collection, but each one becomes my favorite in the moment that I read it.

I wished so fervently to be white with blue eyes so there would be a place for me. When I started writing, I wrote about characters like that, because they were the ones stories happened to. It never occurred to me that I had made my own brown skin an issue to be addressed in the novel of my life. Looking back, it tears my heart in two. No one should ever feel like that about any part of their identity. And for that to change, we have to change the stories we tell, to stop putting emphasis on the wrong things and framing them as weird and strange. We have to turn the spotlight onto the characters we usually leave in the shadows.

–Shveta Thakrar on Visibility Fiction talking about her story “Krishna Blue” and growing up different in a small town

When Sofia Samatar turned in a paper by a student named Yolanda (complete with section headings, footnotes, and copious misspellings), I instantly fell in love. I thought, “Yes! This is a person who remembers being in school, being clever and lonely, and using homework as a dialogue with the teacher.”

Invisible disability has its own confining tropes. I mention this specifically because my character Mandy, in my Kaleidoscope story “Every Little Thing”, is invisibly disabled. Typically, invisibly disabled characters become divided in fiction and media into two categories: they either recover or they die.

I also wondered how far we would go, as Filipinos, in order to sacrifice ourselves in order to make sure that our loved ones would have a better life; how far the Philippine government might go in encouraging Filipinos to pursue work abroad and contribute to the country’s economy.

“Young men from all backgrounds will find something that speaks to them in the pages of this important, amazing collection, although I’d wager that young men who aren’t white and straight will draw even more strength and power from its marvelous stories. Highly Recommended.”

“Perhaps the best part about this Kaleidoscope is how genuinely entertaining these stories are. Editors Alisa Krasnostein and Julia Rios did an excellent job of curating this anthology. There are dystopian societies, time-travelling, parallel universes, superheroes, mythology tie-ins, aliens, and more. Chances are, if you’re at all interested in SFF, you’ll find a story in here that you’ll love.”

“… if you’re interested in an introduction to diverse YA and how it can be done, this is a great place to start, given the range of stories and settings that offer up so many different ways to see how it’s done, and how it could be.”